Category: FUCKING DAY

At the height of Elvis’s fame, he was making three movies a year. By 1965, he was really starting to run out of steam, but a failing movie studio called Allied Artists thought an Elvis movie made on the world’s thinnest budget would probably make five million dollars and save them from bankruptcy, and they were right. They didn’t even commission new songs for the movie; instead, opting to Frankenstein a script together around old, unsuccessful Elvis songs. They called the movie Tickle Me, probably because no one would let them name it Elvis Shakes His Penis Around, Hawaiian Style.

Tickle Me has a pretty typical Elvis movie set up. Poor Elvis just wants to do his manly Elvis activities, in this case bull riding, but he’s thwarted at every turn by women desperate to fuck him. He’s on his way to the bull pen, but oh no, what’s this? Elvis has fallen through a trap door into a humorously large crate of dirty panties those rascally women left for him. How will poor Elvis ever get out of this one?

In this instance, Elvis plays Lonnie Beal, a rodeo man who’s just looking for enough work to keep him afloat during the off-season. He needs money to buy hair dye, guitars, and tight fighting pants, you see. Unfortunately, the only job he can get is at the horny lady ranch! Oh no! Poor Elvis. He’s distraught until he is introduced directly to the butthole of a particularly beautiful woman.

The ranch functions as a fat camp for society women, models, and actresses. As Elvis’s roommate and gay best friend, Stanley, explains: “We roast ’em, toast ’em, wiggle ’em, jiggle ’em, rend ’em, bend ’em, and give them very little to eat.” There are a lot of gags about how the women are so hungry they will pilfer the roast chickens of visiting investors, or get caught hiding in a hay bale eating a comically large chocolate bar. Of course, there aren’t actually any fat women on the ranch. That would be crazy. It’s just Elvis’s usual hot woman mob, but they put some of them in baggy T-shirts.

Elvis’s love interest in this movie, Pam, is an instructor at the ranch, of course. Elvis cannot date a woman who has ever thought of being fat. She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen, and apparently quit acting a few years after this movie for another job, being the princess of Langenburg. Pam’s storyline takes the movie in a much stranger and darker direction than just Elvis taunting thin women with chocolate bars for eighty minutes.

Because all of history occurred more closely together than I can fathom, Pam’s grandfather was the owner of a silver mine in the Old West. There’s a legend that he’s hidden his fortune somewhere in the nearby ghost town of Silverado. Elvis learns this because Pam has an issue with near kidnappings. This woman is constantly on the verge of being kidnapped by masked thugs, something Elvis apparently thinks is hot so he sings a love song directly into another woman’s mouth in hopes of making Pam jealous.

Elvis follows Pam to Silverado on a gold hunting expedition, and there’s a long fantasy sequence where he plays the panhandle kid in a restored version of the ghost town’s bar. He sings another song with Pam, who’s playing the role of an old-timey prostitute who feeds milk to Elvis. I’m assuming this is because they didn’t want him to drink alcohol in the movie, but also, there’s some pretty surface level symbolism there for a man whose mommy issues were reportedly thriving.

It takes a few songs and two kidnapping rescues to convince Pam to fall in love with Elvis. One of those songs is called “Dirty Dirty Feeling,” and includes the lyrics, “I hear you’re pretty good at running, but pretty soon you’ll slip and fall. That’s when I’ll drag you home with me, girl. I’m gonna chain you to a wall.” Jesus Christ, that got dark real fast. I wonder why that wasn’t a huge hit for Elvis.

I feel like I should note that the strangeness of this song is underlined by the fact that while in the movie, Elvis is supposedly singing it outside while doing his job tending to horses and being ogled by women, and there’s a ton of echo on the recording. It was clearly supposed to sound like it’s being performed in a large auditorium, and they did nothing to tweak that for this or any other song in the movie.

So, Elvis threatens to kidnap a woman who is experiencing constant near kidnapping, and she’s like, “I love you.” They’re in love now. The only problem in their relationship is that other women just keep throwing themselves at Elvis.

Pam isn’t the jealous type, but when their mutual boss lures him into her office and offers him a raise and a kiss on the mouth, Pam catches them and immediately dumps Elvis. I thought it was kind of wild that Elvis actually cheats on his girlfriend in this movie. He fully participates in the kiss. Later, when explaining it to his gay best friend Stanley, he says, “So she caught me kissing the boss? What’s a brotherly kiss?” There was tongue. I’ve seen what Elvis does with his cousins, so I guess it’s possible he was tonguing down his brothers as well.

Elvis tries to apologize to Pam by singing at her window, but Pam isn’t having it. Good for Pam, but now who will protect her from all those silver mine heiress kidnappings? I guess she’ll just have to make it on her own, because we now cut to Elvis back on the rodeo circuit, sucking at his job. Bull riding is the only sport where all you have to do is successfully sit for a long time, and Elvis can’t even do that. They do, honestly, kind of a funny bit where the rodeo announcer introduces him a little bit less enthusiastically each time as the bull knocks him off immediately.

Why can’t Elvis rodeo anymore? It’s the woman’s fault, of course! He’s simply too lovesick to rodeo good. Luckily, his gay best friend Stanley tracks him down and tells him that Pam is devastated by his loss, and he needs to come to the ranch and win her back. He’s lying. Pam is clearly fine. She does not want to see Elvis. In fact, when she sees him arrive at the ranch, she flees to Silverado, and Elvis and Stanley give chase. They all get caught in a rainstorm, and Elvis forces Pam into the abandoned motel with a slap on her wet ass. It’s not an Elvis movie without a wet lady spanking. If Pam had depression, it’s gone now.

The final act of the movie is a straight up Scooby-Doo episode. Even though the gold-seeking kidnappers’ entire goal for the first two-thirds of the movie was to get Pam to this ghost town so they could force her to find her grandfather’s treasure, now that she’s here, they want her gone. Or maybe they’re hoping to scare only Elvis and Stanley away but somehow keep Pam? The plan isn’t clear, but they do dress up in cheap plastic masks and chase everybody around the motel in a series of slapstick shenanigans.

The last part of the movie doesn’t have any songs in it; I guess because the general topic of Elvis songs is “uh oh, I’m horny,” and that doesn’t translate well to a series of comedic chases. I guess it’s a good thing they didn’t play one of Elvis’s menacing love songs as he attempts to wrestle these masked men to the ground. Something like, “slowly but surely, I’m gonna wear you down, slowly but surely, I’m gonna bring you round, to my way of thinking, my way of kissing, my way of lovin’, slowly but surely, I’m gonna make you mine.”

In the end, Elvis manages to defeat three men by noticing a door that says “Do not Open” which leads to a two story fall into a giant mud pit outside. Each man lunges at Elvis, and his stunt double grabs the top of the door and swings out, so the men are thrown from the building. Stanley also ends up falling out of the door, but instead of landing safely in the mud, he goes straight down into a cellar. When Elvis and Pam go to retrieve Stanley’s corpse, they accidentally find Pam’s grandpa’s gold spewing from the walls of the motel.

Don’t worry, Stanley lived because Elvis movies run on cartoon logic. Pam and Elvis end the movie by getting married at the fat lady ranch, also because of cartoon logic. The boss who ruined their relationship is a guest at their wedding, and it’s not weird or uncomfortable for anyone, because of Elvis logic. They drive off into the sunset together as Elvis sings a vaguely menacing love song, and Stanley is accidentally dragged behind their car.

If you’re still wondering why this movie is called Tickle Me, it’s pervert reasons. According to the trailer, it’s because the movie has “gags that will tickle you, and gals that will tickle you, and hit tunes that will tickle you”. (Being tickled by ladies not guaranteed). I guess “Elvis’s Cheapest Movie” wasn’t a tagline that would sell tickets, but tell the American public they were signing up to watch women tickle Elvis in 1965, and get ready to be crushed under a cascading pile of old-timey prospector money.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: KNM, who finally understands the title of that supernatural slashfic. It was an Elvis reference the whole time!